With Life by You, strategy giant Paradox wants to get into the game of life simulations. And with Rod Humble, Paradox has brought on board someone who knows exactly what makes the Sims community tick.
Get the popcorn, life sims are about to get really exciting! The Sims series has been the undisputed genre top dog for decades. Now a serious Sims competitor is growing up in Canada with Paralives – and strategy giant Paradox is also jumping on the life sim bandwagon with Life by You.
At the helm is none other than Rod Humble, who already led the development of The Sims 2 and 3 and played a major role in shaping the series.
In a livestream, the developer studio Paradox Tectonic now provided more insights into the ambitious project. What is Life by You and how does Paradox want to challenge EA for the life simulation throne?
What is Life by You?
At its core, Life by You is meant to play like a traditional life simulation. You create a character or entire families, build a house, get a job, get married, have children … you know the game. The main focus of the new project is supposed to be on the involvement of the players.
What exactly does that mean? For one thing, Paradox is taking a very community-oriented approach. Life by You is set to launch in Early Access as early as 12 September 2023 and will be heavily influenced by player feedback.
On the other hand, players will be able to completely rebuild, destroy and erect the world of Life by You and thus design it entirely according to their own preferences. Numerous creator tools and editors are available for this. Because Life by You wants to become the “most modifiable and open life simulation”.
The idea behind this sandbox: In typical Paradox fashion, Life by You wants to offer the community an open world playground where storytelling can unfold.
The most important features at a glance
- Creating Humans: In the Human Creator, you create your families and assign personality and character traits to them. You can control your humans or Humans (i.e. Paradox’s Sims) either by drag-and-drop or switch to direct third-person control. As in the Sims series, you build houses for them and experience their everyday life. By the way, you can take on the role of another person from the world at any time and continue playing their lives and story.
- Open World: Life by You offers an open world in which you can move back and forth without loading screens (The Sims 3 says hello). As a means of transport, you can use a car or a bicycle, and in the announcement trailer you could also see a bus. The open world is not only supposed to be completely modifiable, but also have quests for your characters.
- Mod support: Numerous tools are to make it easy for players to incorporate their own ideas and creations (furniture, dialogue, gameplay) into Life by You.
- Dialogue in real language: Sul sul, fantasy language! Life by You wants to convince with real dialogues and thus bring more storytelling into the game. Conversations are individually adapted to the situations. As a player, you can click through the dialogue trees yourself and even create your own conversations in the tool.
Conclusion: Life by You: What the big Sims competitor wants to beat EA with
Editor’s verdict
Uiuiui, there’s a lot going on right now! I love The Sims, have been following the series since I was a child and have recently found my way back to The Sims 4 as an active player. Especially as a fan of the life simulation, I am incredibly happy that with Paralives and Life by You someone finally dares to stand up to EA.
Both projects sound exciting, and not just on their own. Paralives, for example, is clearly being developed by fans for fans. Life by You even brings a Sims icon on board! But both competitors are also forcing EA itself to rethink. Because there is one thing that the life simulations already have over the top dog: community proximity.
For a long time, EA ignored the Sims fans. A development close to the community, decisive feedback, strong mod support – all this speaks for the new projects and also lets EA take a different path with Project Rene (aka The Sims 5).
It is still too early to pass judgement on Life by You. However, the positive feedback on Paralives suggests that Rod Humble’s project is also opening doors for life sim fans. If you take a closer look at the screenshots, one or the other detail leaks out that the Sims 4 community has been longing for (the colour wheel, modular building mode, more detailed personality traits).
I’m very excited about Life by You and what Rod Humble’s expertise will make of it. It won’t be long before we can get our own hands on it either: Early Access is starting much earlier than expected!
